Guest Author - Andrea Gardiner, Ph.D.

I know the title may seem somewhat silly to you when you first read it. “I mean really” you might be thinking, there are of course many instances of things and objects being destroyed on a daily basis: in office shredding machines, junk yards, and even the garbage disposal in the kitchen, just to name a few. There seems to be no doubt about it that destruction is a very real occurrence. In an effort to re-work or shake up your concepts about creation and destruction I am going to ask you to consider a concept within the community of thermodynamics called entropy.

Entropy is central to the second law of thermodynamics that states that things within nature tend to move towards disorder rather than order. The definition of “disorder” within this context however needs to be defined, as it is not being used as you would typically think. Basically, what entropy is stating is that in isolated systems, molecules will tend to move towards a state where they can be expressed in varying degree of arrangements; you can say that these molecules are seeking other avenues of expression or other ways in which to “order” themselves. So even out of this “disorder” comes order. This assertion sounds almost paradoxical. How can two diametrically opposed concepts compliment each other in such a way? Well its truth can be seen in the beautiful explosion of starts called supernovas.

So what is a supernova? A supernova is essentially a star at the end of its life cycle that explodes. Not alls stars do this of course, usually stars will simply burn out leaving behind a lump of ash as a reminder that it once existed. On the other hand, stars that choose to end this life with a big bang will explode, dispensing great amounts of energy, light, color and elements such as hydrogen and iron. The capacity for the destruction that such an explosion can cause is immense. Uh oh, there it is again, there goes that talk about destruction again. There is however another side to this story, one that I have touched on already with the concept of entropy.

As stated earlier, when these stars explode they release energy and elements, all of which is needed to create planets and other stars. These same elements and energy is the very makeup of this planet and all its inhabitants. A second law of thermodynamics is worth mentioning here and that is the law of conservation of energy. It states that energy is neither created nor destroyed, it simply changes form. That means that not one single drop of energy was created or destroyed, it has always existed. So although the star seemed to display a state of chaos and disorder, its actions are really precursors which are necessary for the formation, or alternate arrangements of molecules needed to create something else. So don’t be so quick to think that the star that seemingly self destruct or the paper that went through the shredder is lost and gone forever.